Leonard Bernstein at 100

IF YOU were a well-heeled Massachusetts lady in the late 1920s and wanted your hair fixed like the movie stars, there was one man to turn to: Samuel Bernstein. In 1927, this entrepreneurial immigrant, who had arrived in New York from Tsarist Russia aged 16, acquired the only local licence to sell the Frederics Permanent Wave machine for curling hair. Like many businessmen of the times, he expected his eldest son to follow him into the family firm.

But Louis Bernstein, born in August 1918 and known to everyone as Lenny (he officially changed his name to Leonard as a teenager), had different ideas. The family had no musical roots to speak of, but ten-year-old Lenny found himself drawn obsessively to his aunt Clara’s piano. No matter that his father remained vehemently opposed to the notion that he should make music his life, there was but one path ahead.

For all his early misgivings, Samuel later conceded that his son…Continue reading

SIMILAR NEWS

COSMOLOGISTS, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, have on occasion mooted the possibility of an ekpyrotic universe, one which expands, then contracts into fire, then expands again. Like most big cosmic ideas, this one has almost certainly been purloined, ornamented and abused more than once in the vast works of …

EVER since 1998, when North America’s National Hockey League (NHL) began putting its season on hold to allow its players to participate in the Olympics, men’s ice hockey has been a signature sport at the winter games. Elite squads from Canada, the home country of nearly half of the players …

COMPARED with other major European cities, Milan’s contemporary art offering is slight. The Gallerie d’Arte Moderna, housed in a venerable palazzo, contains some important late-19th-century work, but little of note from the 20th century and nothing from the 21st. The Museo del Novecento, despite its name, is meant to consider …